Our Mission@2x

Our Mission

CJI’s mission is to end mass criminalization and mass incarceration by building and strengthening the infrastructure of the grassroots criminal justice movement to bring about a fundamental transformation of the U.S. criminal legal system. We fund where the movement is developing, shifting, and growing. Working in solidarity across race, class, faith, gender and gender identity, sexuality, immigration status, and age, we believe this movement should be led by those most impacted by the injustices of the current system.

Our Vision

We envision a world in which all people are acknowledged, valued, and supported to maximize their potential and share their innate gifts. We envision a world in which incarceration and prisons are not the first response to the harm caused, but rather that harm is addressed in ways that affirm the humanity of both those responsible and those who have been harmed. We are all interconnected and interdependent, and we envision a world in our systems that acknowledges this interdependence by affirming all our humanity.
Our Values@2x
Our Vision@2x

Our Values

Philanthropic funding for movements should be accountable to those movements. People directly impacted by injustice, especially formerly incarcerated people, should be leaders of their own liberation movement. We cannot move forward as a society without the transformation of both systems and selves. We value our funding model as a way to do both. Our work is based on the belief that each of us has more to bring to social justice work if we bring our whole selves. We each have more to offer than expertise, money, connections, or only one part of our identity. We believe that part of the violence of privilege and oppression in our society is that it cuts us off from our humanity and our ability to see others as their full human selves. We value the CJI process as one that affirms the wholeness, gifts, and strengths of each of us in our uniqueness.
Our Mission@2x

Our Mission

CJI’s mission is to end mass criminalization and mass incarceration by building and strengthening the infrastructure of the grassroots criminal justice movement to bring about a fundamental transformation of the U.S. criminal legal system. We fund where the movement is developing, shifting, and growing. Working in solidarity across race, class, faith, gender and gender identity, sexuality, immigration status, and age, we believe this movement should be led by those most impacted by the injustices of the current system.

Our Values@2x

Our Vision

We envision a world in which all people are acknowledged, valued, and supported to maximize their potential and share their innate gifts. We envision a world in which incarceration and prisons are not the first response to the harm caused, but rather that harm is addressed in ways that affirm the humanity of both those responsible and those who have been harmed. We are all interconnected and interdependent, and we envision a world in our systems that acknowledge this interdependence by affirming all our humanity.

Our Vision@2x

Our Values

Philanthropic funding for movements should be accountable to those movements. People directly impacted by injustice, especially formerly incarcerated people, should be leaders of their own liberation movement. We cannot move forward as a society without the transformation of both systems and selves. We value our funding model as a way to do both. Our work is based on the belief that each of us has more to bring to social justice work if we bring our whole selves. We each have more to offer than expertise, money, connections, or only one part of our identity. We believe that part of the violence of privilege and oppression in our society is that it cuts us off from our humanity and our ability to see others as their full human selves. We value the CJI process as one that affirms the wholeness, gifts, and strengths of each of us in our uniqueness.